Slashdot was once the gold standard of IT information websites. The community was vibrant and rambunctious. It was interesting, funny, and frustrating. I'm not entire sure what happened. Maybe the Internet grew up around us. Like the Old West, someone fenced the cowboys away. Maybe we got rid of the goofs that were our necessary yeast. Dunno. But it's not the same Slashdot it was a decade ago.

I still don't know why they're calling it "austerity" instead of "prosperity". Seems a really bad propaganda fumble. The whole point is some short term sacrifice now so that the countries in question can have a great economic future. "Austerity" emphasizes the cod liver oil swallowing part of the process, not the goal.

For a more successful example of propaganda, take "jobs programme". They'd probably fund more jobs just dropping money out of helicopters (or doing nothing for that matter). But it conveys

Because it's cutting peoples jobs and income, which is making them less prosperous, which is reducing spending, which is making everyone else less prosperous, which is, in turn reducing government revenue, leaving them less money to pay people and having to cut more, making the economic future look bleaker, and less prosperous.

The whole point is that short term sacrifice has destroyed greece, caused a double dip recession in the UK, and left all of europe wallowing in a debt crisis they can't get out of bec

That's an interesting assertion. You have evidence that that's going to happen? I see instead that some pretty dumb policies have borne fruit in Greece as well as elsewhere. All I can say is that if a little short term sacrifice can destroy Greece, then I don't see the point of the country. Just end it and come up with something better.

The double dip recession is a classic sign of what happens when you bail out banks and other failed businesses rather than end them. Often they fail again (the second dip)

That's an interesting assertion. You have evidence that that's going to happen?

Uh... what exactly do you think austerity is? We can't have our own facts here. Cutting spending means slashing salaries and laying people off. It doesn't mean anything else. It's not *going* to happen, that *is happening* that's what austerity is. If you cancel and order for a ship then the people who were going to make the ship don't have a job anymore. If you lay off a teacher they aren't a teacher anymore. In good economic times they transition to the private sector. In bad economic times they

Lying their way into the Euro and then following a borrow-and-spend policy has destroyed Greece. For years their economy was based on easy credit which has now gone away, and the Euro doesn't allow them to devalue their currency the way they always used to.

caused a double dip recession in the UK

The British economy has been a joke for years. For a decade or so it's been based on borrowing more and more money to sell houses to each other while exporting factories to Eastern Europe. And it's going into a recession despite the very borrow and spend policies you promote, because there's no real economy left.

All true. So what do you do about it now? In the UK they need to invest in industries that will create jobs. Waiting for someone with money to come in and start a new industry in the UK could take a very long time. In greece it's the same problem, but if the solution to everything was just kicking them out of the euro that would have happened already. Kicking greece out won't help spain, italy, ireland, portugal etc.

and left all of europe wallowing in a debt crisis they can't get out of because austerity is shrinking economies and leaving them no path to growth.

That's like complaining that you borrowed $100k on your credit cards and now you're having to cut spending to pay it back. The solution is not to get another credit card and borrow more money on that to pay the interest on the existing cards.

It's also destroying 'confidence' in their ability to recover, because everyone with money to lend realizes you can't cut your way into prosperity in bad economic times.

Europe has no 'ability to recover' without massively slashing regulation and taxation. Which won't happen before a catastrophic collapse.

Personal finance is not economics. Please don't confuse the two. But since you need a

Kicking out countries that can't cut it would sure help the rest. I think the mistake here was attempting full integration with weak economies and societies. If they had stopped at dropping most trade barriers, they wouldn't have a problem with Greece. But integrating all those disparate societies together just didn't work.

Lets say you have a business with 100k in debt. At high interest. And the bank wants its money. Are you going to slash inventory, and reduce operating hours in the hopes of getting a positive balance? The bank won't go along with that plan and will foreclose on you because you can't make the money back. If you go to them and say "look, with 20k more I can expand into these new markets that will make me money I might actually be able to pay you back properly" they might go for it. They all need to spend, to get people working and spending, to create private spending to supply the demand they should have.

Now, if the bank is pretty stupid, sure they might go with plan B, "doubling down" on a bad investment in you. You have high interest rates because you are a huge risk. Adding another 20k

Kicking out countries that can't cut it would sure help the rest. I think the mistake here was attempting full integration with weak economies and societies. If they had stopped at dropping most trade barriers, they wouldn't have a problem with Greece. But integrating all those disparate societies together just didn't work.

Lets say you have a business with 100k in debt. At high interest. And the bank wants its money. Are you going to slash inventory, and reduce operating hours in the hopes of getting a positive balance? The bank won't go along with that plan and will foreclose on you because you can't make the money back. If you go to them and say "look, with 20k more I can expand into these new markets that will make me money I might actually be able to pay you back properly" they might go for it. They all need to spend, to get people working and spending, to create private spending to supply the demand they should have.

Now, if the bank is pretty stupid, sure they might go with plan B, "doubling down" on a bad investment in you. You have high interest rates because you are a huge risk. Adding another 20k of debt onto that risk is throwing good money after bad.

Let me introduce a variation of plan A. You tell the bank that you can't pay them back. You're going to slash inventory and reduce operating hours in the hopes of getting a positive balance. Now, they can foreclose on your business and get cents on the dollar. Or they can forgive a significant fraction of the loan, own a good sized, but non-controlling piece of the business and get a better return overall. Their choice.

They choose right? Then you trim the business and you have less debt weighing you down. Good position for when the recovery happens. They choose wrong? Then you walk away from the business and let the bank foreclose on it. That's a real plan.

The eurozone needs a political union or a trans-national social insurance system (say health care, pensions, education and defence, they already have agriculture) if it wants to remain a currency union.

Suuuure. I think the problem here is the erroneous assumption that political unions, trans-nationa social insurance, etc has positive value. This mess wouldn't exist if these things really were beneficial.

Sure, kicking all of the countries out of the Euro except france germany and the benelux countries would work. That's whats going to happen because of austerity anyway.

Your definition of stupid and mine vary. It depends how credible the plan is. If you have nothing to take of value, or if your business plan is good it could be worth more investment. If your plan is "I'm going to take 20k and buy gold" well... the bank could buy gold itself. It doesn't need you.

And you're living in a fantasy land thinking there's any other good solution than fiat currency. Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.

What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better

Also, the euro can be inflated. Germany is strongly resisting that plan, probably because they're trying to force through a fiscal union or to get greece to leave the euro. But 3-4% inflation in the eurozone would do wonders for the debt problems.

Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.

So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.

What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.

I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc

Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.

So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.

yep. And if you don't like it, go somewhere that lets you choose whether or not you're going to pay taxes at all. Like greece. Or pakistan. Seriously. Pay off the right people and your tax bill will magically disappear.

What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.

I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc. Germany and France have thrived mostly because of their previously solid foundation before the adoption of the Euro.

yes actually, you did. France and Germany had solid foundations before the euro in part because they had large tax bases.

The US spends significantly less as a percentage of GDP on total government spending (and taxation) than anyone else and has a massive deficit which it's paying next to nothing in interest on. It also has higher unemployment than Canada or Germany (by quite a lot) despite a significantly lower tax burden, but lower unemployment than france.

Really? Because when you look at it, the US is quite high. Not as high as Europe of course but a lot higher than the places where people are looking to invest their money in such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, etc. When you look at the US tax burden you also have to look at the fact that the US taxes worldwide income if you are a US citizen which most other countries do not.

Yes, really, it's not high at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP France is at 44%, germany at 40, canada at 32, the US at 27. That's total government (so the sub national states/provinces/local governments). The US taxation on all overseas persons is inconsequentially small, as it taxes income only over 90.

Chile, Singapore and Hong Kong have much lower costs than the US, or are much closer to useful markets. The vast majority of countries with any money are higher than the US. The only notable exception is Taiwan, which collects US handouts. Chile I will point out has about 1/4 the per capita income that the US does (1/4 the per capita costs). And HK and Singapore are both cities, so don't really hold up under comparison to a full country. If you count HK as part of China (which it is) china is at 17%, and you know why everyone is moving there, and Singapore would I guess count as part of malaysia but doesn't really.

A situation where the government borrows a crap-ton of money on useless stuff? A situation where the voters expect the nanny-welfare state to take care of them all their life? Etc. The things that led Greece to this crisis isn't because they have a currency they can't control, instead they can't get out of the crisis the easy way by hyperinflating their currency (something Greece has enjoyed doing since ancient times!) and instead actually have to cut spending and get their affairs in ord

I drive highways and cross bridges that I helped pay for. I use public parks - I've got a four year old who loves the outdoors, and we've got a number of public recreation areas around that he just loves. I pay $25 a year to fish on public waters, and the state makes sure the lakes are stocked and the fish aren't diseased.

I've got a pickup truck that sits in my driveway all week while I'm away, and lo and behold, it's always there when I get home - no one steals it while

I still don't know why they're calling it "austerity" instead of "prosperity". Seems a really bad propaganda fumble. The whole point is some short term sacrifice now so that the countries in question can have a great economic future. "Austerity" emphasizes the cod liver oil swallowing part of the process, not the goal.

It's not what you call it that's the problem, it's what you serve.If, instead of disgusting cod liver oil, you served fresh poached cod liver, it would be a delicacy. Sure, some would malign it without even having tasted it, but it would be more palatable to most, and very palatable to those with a developed palate.In the economic sense, the austerity measures themselves are not palatable at all. So drop them, and dig up the ones that are, even if less conventional.

Right, just when you are drowning in debt it's time to spend billions on a massive program to do something with no commercial value whatsoever.

I'm a bit confused. So everything that a government does should have a "commercial value"? If it has "commercial value," why should governments even be involved? Shouldn't private industry be able to do it?

So are you saying that it's okay for the government to have projects like the Space Shuttle, which was going to have it's launches subsidized by carrying private satellites into orbit? After all, putting satellites into orbit has "commercial value." So the government should lock out private enterpris

Yep, that is exactly it. Seriously. This isn't 1850. We understand a great deal more about economies than we used to, and *now* is definitely the time for massive government spending. Otherwise we'll keep wallowing around waiting for someone to try massive government spending to kick up demand. And I don't know about you but waiting for the chinese to spend their pile of 2 trillion dollars, and hoping they spend it on stuff we make, at some unknown abstract point in the future doesn't seem like a good economic plan.

It's not actually a fallacy. For an example, see Japan, because of the Tsunami their economy grew year on year about 4.7% (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/japan-raises-january-march-economic-growth-estimate-to-12-percent-amid-disaster-recovery/2012/06/07/gJQAQASYMV_story.html) Spending is spending. Considering the tsunami cost them about 2.3% of GDP, and they've seen 2.9 percent net growth mostly from reconstruction they are net ahead, and reconstruction isn't over yet. The new windows are better than the old ones so to speak. Education, health care, roads etc. have no more commercial value than that which we place on them. Space exploration is absolutely no different. EADS was largely organized and funded by government because as a commercial enterprise all of the precursor companies were wholly uncompetitive. That *investment*, which was made on the backs of taxpayers, notably rich ones, kept 100 000 direct jobs in europe, + all the spinoff jobs that would have otherwise gone to the US and boeing etc. Investing in space exploration now is probably not the most efficient stimulus plan available to europe, but it wouldn't be all that big of a stimulus plan anyway. 100 billion euros a year is probably less than a 10th of the spending they need.

Most of europe isn't drowning in debt. Quite the contrary, the only country drowning in debt is really greece, with italy a distant and not particularly serious second. Greece's debt problem is compounded because as they make cuts to government spending they're driving down the ability of those workers to spend, which is reducing private sector demand, contracting the economy, making their debt proportionally larger. They're fucked because the thing to do in this situation is either be Florida, and have a large portion of your spending be buffeted by the 'federal' (european) government, think medicare, social security etc, which wouldn't devalue just because one local area is having a bad time, or to devalue their currency to encourage a growth in exports. Europe won't go along with a federal union, and they can't devalue their currency... so they're boned. They are effectively trapped on a gold standard.

When you're drowning in debt you need to either shrink the value of that debt relative to your foreign holdings (devalue your currency), or grow your economy, or both, since one will naturally lead to the other. Since every country in the world cannot devalue against each other, and we've all devalued quite a bit against china there's not much to be done there.

When times are good and the economy is booming, that's when the government needs to lay people off. Right now, paying them to scratch their butts (lets call it unemployment) would be better than what they're currently doing. When the economy needs jobs you need to start laying them off from the public sector. When the private sector won't hire the public sector needs to, or else you start contracting the economy in a spiral.

To use another example of the broken window not actually a fallacy is how WW2 spending pulled economies out of recession. The new deal and so on in the US were essentially the same thing, a start if you will. Building a huge amount of stuff that was of no commercial value created jobs for the better part of 7 or 8 years (depending on where exactly you where), and that boom continued on well after because you had a demobilizing of public sector workers (soldiers) into the private sector as the economy grew.

Thanks for saying that. There was an interesting fact on the BBC today. If seen as a single country the EU actually has a better looking balance sheet than both the US and United Kingdom. There may be a couple of struggling states but overall the Eurozone is still doing really well, and the member states are far better off in than out.

Drowning in debt? Well - let's put people to work, building spacecraft, building colonies, producing oxygen, water, and food - etc ad nauseum. Let's go to the moon, and the economic problems will begin to cure themselves. There's JOBS out there!

Theoretically that would work, as long as you could guarantee and indefinite demand for lunar or martian colonies. Actually you could do that, it wouldn't solve all the economic problems, but if you could guarantee funding for space research for say, the next 30 years (insofar as governments ever make guarantees), you would create jobs, spur demand which would create more jobs. Naturally the problem with this plan is that the payoff from all of that investment may never match the investment, directly or i

Borrowing money isn't fraud, and raising taxes isn't fraud. Nor is taxation theft. Taxation is agreeing that some things are best for the state to manage and paying for those from everyone.

You need to focus more on jobs, which will create wealth. Cutting spending is creating a spiral of destruction in its wake that is destroying wealth left right and centre. Without jobs there's no demand, without demand there's no production and no innovation, without which there's less demand, and less wealth.

"Jobs do not create wealth. Jobs are a cost. If you think jobs create wealth, you should be eliminating all technology and promoting a Pol Pot-style 'back to the land' movement."

You probably have the same degree in economics that the top bankers have. You know, those bankers who bankrupted the entire banking industry just a few years ago. Those bankers who are still, today, making insane gambles on derivatives and speculation.

Without jobs, there is no wealth. You breakfast wasn't produced by magic, nor w

Really? So I can agree that those things aren't best for the state to manage and not pay for them?

No, I didn't think so.

Well, you can't just agree that murder isn't a crime and start killing people either, but that is the "tyranny" of democracy I'm afraid.

Jobs do not create wealth. Jobs are a cost.

Jobs do create wealth, and lack of jobs is a cost. If people have jobs they have money to spend on things, which creates a market for the goods and services businesses create. Also businesses need to employ people to generate wealth for them, and if a particular job does not generate more income that it costs to provide you are doing it wrong.

and which reality is that? That effective honest taxation can buffet your society from the worst of economic down turns (as in say sweden, norway, germany) or the fantasy that cutting spending will lure the confidence fairy to spur growth like in Spain and Greece?

You're living in 80 year old long discredited fantasy land. The fact that policy makers in europe are living in the same long discredited fantasy land should tell you that they either are trying to force some other plot (a fiscal union) behind th

What about using things that taxes pay for while refusing to pay taxes. Is that theft? If society allows you to opt out of tax, will you accept that you are forbidden to interact with society unless granted permission? Or will you force society to interact with you and force society to accept that you won't contribute anything to its maintainence?
Anyone that argues taxation is "force" in effect argue everything is force, making nothing unforced and thus an absolutely useless measure of ethical worth. If t

Of course you wouldn't be able to use the roads unless you'd pay for them, I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I? It's hardly a revolutionary concept to pay for what you use and only what you use. Even in areas where roads are paid for by theft, you still have to pay tolls to use some roads, such could be a way of paying for them without taxation. Commercial vehicles would also be charged and would simply pass on the costs to customers in the form of shipping charges, bus fares, et

Oh, here we go again with this canard. The breakdown that always seems to escape those who claim that taxation is theft is that firstly, taxes exist because the taxed population chose to create the tax load, and second, paying for what you use and only what you use is an absurdly inefficient way to run a society. Sure, you think it's fair to pay for the roads you use. But pay with what? Did you pay for the infrastructure necessary to create and secure the money you're using to buy your groceries, or do you have to work out a barter or deal with a bunch of incompatible currencies? We did that back in colonial times, and tossed it aside in favor of a central treasury because it's nightmarishly inefficient. The Interstate Highway system came into being because the "pay for what you use" concept simply didn't get the job done. There are a thousand examples of how this works, and the simple fact that virtually every society on Earth uses taxation should clue you in that it's probably not nearly as bad an idea as you'd love to believe.

I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I?

No, but you can get to the parking lot and you can enter the store without fear that it'll collapse on you and you can buy stuff with a reasonable assumption that you'll get what you're paying for and you can trust that they won't just beat you up and take the money you brought and so on and so on, all because society decided that individuals having to secure all of that personally makes for a crapsack world. If you think you can do better, there are places you can go such that you pay only for what you personally use, but they're far away from most other people and you'll find that you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy just surviving.

The current method of taxation steals from those who provide the most to society in order to pay for those who either produce nothing or produce less.

It is to laugh. Do you really think that those with the most income are necessarily the ones who contribute the most to society? If so, you're unrecoverably naive. If you think that money is the measure of value, then I'll thank you to tell me what Paris Hilton has done to earn the vast millions of dollars she has access to. If she hadn't been born into it, she'd be a waitress somewhere in middle America and we both know it. Society is full of people who create value in excess of their paycheck and people who drag in tons of money without contributing much at all, so the whole "steals from the rich" argument falls apart in that regard.

Theft is compulsory, so is taxation.

Taxation isn't compulsory. This isn't the Soviet Union. Taxes are just a requirement for being a U.S. citizen, so if you don't want to pay taxes to the U.S. government, then leave the country and renounce your citizenship, and nobody will stop you. However, if you want the benefit of being a U.S. citizen, then you have to pay taxes. As I said above, there are many places in the world where paying taxes isn't required, and you could avail yourself of any number of those places if you don't like taxation. Just don't sit here with your safe drinking water and your anti-fraud legislation and your right to ask for aid if random chance turns you into one of those "less productive" people and whine about having to pay for it. Walk the walk, and all that.

Um... 15 years you say? Were you in public school in 15 years? Were you *ever* in public school? The fact that the rest of the public can read this post because *they* were in public school means you benefit because you can communicate with them.

Ever had to call the police? No? Good. Because much of government is a giant insurance system. If you don't have to use it that means nothing has gone horribly wrong. Ever been invaded or bombed by a foreign power? In 15 years. Why yes, yes you have. And y

Printing money isn't just because of borrowing. Devaluing your currency makes your economy competitive*, and it's preferable to have inflation to deflation. Since populations are generally growing, as is productivity etc. you need to print enough to keep up with that growth, and you're better to slightly overshoot than under.

Education produces wealth btw, and government healthcare saves wealth. Government can also produce wealth by balancing risk and collectively providing services which would be difficu

The other difference between taxation and theft is that you have a say about the taxes. You vote for your government. You say what gets taxed and what doesn't. Don't blame the tax man for taking what you've told him to take.

What would you propose it be backed by then? Gold? Land? Because if you want to know how much gold you'd need you're in for a problem. And when someone asks for gold you don't have... well. That's why you're not on the gold standard isn't it?

Money is a representation of wealth. If you actually had to have all that wealth hanging around in reserve to back up the notes it wouldn't be circulating. And someone would just find whatever your currency is backed by (or based on) and manipulate that. A gold

Actually, those things (except for war which is a terrible thing with no benefits) do have commercial value and should be done by private companies. The government's schools are little more than prisons preventing young adults from creating wealth ( look at http://www.khou.com/home/Honor-Student-Jailed-for-Absences-153847275.html [khou.com] ) spewing propaganda and poorly preparing students for basic life. Infrastructure can easily be created by private companies. Anytime there is a resource that needs to be moved, a

War has commercial value. Defending your assets (including your entire country) from being stolen by someone else is valuable. In fact economic value is primarily what people actually fight over. Control of valuable resources, territory etc. are all economically valuable. It's only since WW2 that we've even had a concept of fighting in say libya over the right to self determination, which, itself is a form of economic value (redistribution of libyan wealth), which we hope to profit from eventually.

To me, there's incentive enough to return to the moon simply because of the research and development that would occur. The space program that sent us to the moon the first time brought forth incredible advances in all kinds of areas. We should keep pushing our own boundaries and explore the unknown not simply because it's there, but because we have the opportunity to develop stronger / more efficient / less expensive / generally better tools at the same time. Make the results of the new research available to the public at large and everyone benefits.

And that trip to the moon cost $150 billion (in 2010 dollars). OF COURSE it brought about new discoveries, inventions, tools, etc-- IT WAS $150 BILLION! Saying that we discovered new things in the process of spending that much money does not mean we should automatically do it again.

If our true motivation for a trip to the moon is to develop new things, then we have to ask: does spending that money on a trip to the moon result in more inventions than spending it on the National Institutes of Health? or the National Science Foundation? or the Department of Energy?

The return on that $150B investment has been many, many times that amount. How much return on the NSF investment is there in an equivalent 10 years since the money was spent?

Maybe the NSF has an even better rate of return. Even if you exclude the incomparable inspiration of the Apollo programme. All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D. Instead of on war and the banks.

If we have $300 billion, why should we spend half of it on a LESS productive program?

Because the sum of returns is bigger.If a > 0 and b > 0, then a + b > a.

Also, if you believe that doubling the funding for the currently most effective research will lead to twice the research or more, you are wrong. There is no synergy effect in research, rather the opposite - a law of diminishing returns. You want to financially back single projects instead of heap funding, because the latter gets eaten by bureaucracy - especially the kind of bureaucracy put in place by conservatives to make sure everything is done as cheaply as possible costs an awful lot of money. NASA could become more effective again if the cuts were done among the paper pushers and bean counters, and not the engineering side.

Because there's only so much return NSF is giving. I'm waiting for you to document the return on $150B spent on NSF in a comparable period, say 1993-2002 with 10 years to show for it, compared to NASA's 1961-1970 ROI by 1980.

I'm waiting for you to document the return on $150B spent on NSF in a comparable period, say 1993-2002 with 10 years to show for it, compared to NASA's 1961-1970 ROI by 1980.

That's an interesting test. So you want to cherry pick NASA's time period? Why not compare it for the same period as the NSF. NASA's funding for 1993-2202 was more than enough for them to show incredible advances in a wide range of areas. So where are those advancements?

Also, $150 billion is a lot of money. NASA has received many times that amount. I do not think the NSF has received that amount in its ENTIRE HISTORY.

By the standard we use to calculate NASA's return on investment, the NSF has given us many projects, including:

THE INTERNETWhile it was originally run by DARPA, NSF became involved by the late 70s, and by the mid-80s was the primary financial support for the system. Without the NSF, the internet may have died before it got anywhere.

This is more involvement than NASA has with many of the technologies proponents claim credit for.

So following the same logic, the NSF has repaid itself many many many times over,

The return on that $150B investment has been many, many times that amount. How much return on the NSF investment is there in an equivalent 10 years since the money was spent?

Maybe the NSF has an even better rate of return. Even if you exclude the incomparable inspiration of the Apollo programme. All that means is that we should spend $150B again on space R&D, and on NSF R&D. Instead of on war and the banks.

No it has not. The return on the $150B investment has been virtually non-existant. Why? Because the government, who invested the $150B didn't get to profit from the returns on that investment. Private businesses did. These same businesses were also paid for their services and products, so they made a profit from the actual work performed and a windfall from all of the discoveries that the government or should I say the people paid for.

The government gets taxes from the increased revenue of the businesses you're talking about.

But that's besides the point. Public investments pay off in private income in America. And in improved living conditions. The government payoff is leadership, and in teaching the Russians that we could do in space during the Cold War what we did in the Pacific during WWII: ramp up tech and production to bring it right in their face and beyond.

Of course NASA shouldn't keep a monopoly on the tech it develops. It should

You do have to give him credit for an interesting idea. If NASA really has invented so much that has benefited society, then IF they had patents, they would be able to fund a moon base or whatever.

IF research agencies did have patents.. it would ensure that we never shot ourselves in the foot by cutting their budget. Not only could we clearly point to their earnings from patents to justify their benefits to society, the agency would be able to fund itself even if it wasn't Congress' pet project of the week.

NASA doesn't need patents to fund a Moon base. We have a government that just spent $1.5 TRILLION on a lying waste of time and lives in Iraq for a ('nother) decade. We could have spent that on a Moon base and a Mars base instead, and been as smart as we instead were stupid.

If NASA had patents that it made money from instead of transferring it to private developers, the overall US economy wouldn't be as good, since the tech wouldn't have taken root in general production as it has. American lives wouldn't be

What makes you think Fusion research is not being funded or actively being researched around the world? Until the science (ie. math) is deemed feasible off the blackboard why should the government throw 150B at them? And as far the space program goes why does nobody ever mention the US X3-B vehicles and derivative projects built using information collected from the old space shuttle program. There has has been a stealth capable unmanned reusable space shuttle in use for 2+ years with a manned version alrea

We haven't "Lost the ability" -- we simply don't have factories set up to manufacture that particular rocket. The "orbital propellant depot" concept -- made viable by the "new space" companies and their radically cheaper rockets has been much denigrated by the entrenched space lobby in congress, but the simple fact is, we now have experience in assembling modular craft in orbit (ISS), and thanks to modern computers and materials, spacecraft can be appreciable lighter. Plus, thanks to those same technologies (and better lunar surveying done in the last few years), we can robotically pre-land much of the equipment needed to mount a lunar expedition. Sure, the mission profile would look different, and building the hardware to land on and return from the moon would still cost billions, but the Falcon Heavy, which is really just a falcon 9 modified, will be ready within the next few years. With a green light today and consistent funding, we could easily have a permanent lunar presence by the end of the decade. I would guess the total cost would be less than ten billion dollars, if we were able to keep the government pork under control.

Correct. My understanding was that they weren't destroyed so much as that some of the fine details (fasteners and the like) were simply poorly documented to the point that you can't just dust off the schematics and build one.

We wouldn't go in a Saturn V. What would be the point? It's obsolete. There were already a lot of changes planned for the second manufacturing run that was cancelled, and we've learned a thing or two about rocketry in the last forty years.

(Oh, and there's one on display at the Davidson Space Center in Huntsville, AL, including the electronic components and engines - check it out if you're ever in that area, because it's definitely worth it.)

We have actually lost the ability to go to the moon as the designs of the Saturn rocket were destroyed by NASA. Going to the moon would be the same as going for the first time again with everything being reresearched. This is probably largely the reason it hasn't happened.

Oh Boo Hoo! NASA doesn't have the plans for a Saturn anymore. It's not like Lockheed and Boeing and the others stopped building rockets. They still know how to do it. How do you think Cassini got to Saturn, or Spirit and Opportunity got to Mars? Magic pixie dust and happy thoughts?

If you wanted to build a car, would you dust off the Model-T plans ( How many auto mechanics are skilled at making wooden components?), or would you start with something a little more modern? Ditto with the Saturn-V. We

Especially since the subcontractors that actually made the important bits inside of a Saturn V (Rocketdyne, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed) are still around, and probably still have their plans for those bits. Maybe even newer versions of those bits that work on better cheaper stuff, constructed of lighter materials, as moon missions are 100% about weight first.

Bombers used to have 40-litre V-12 engines in them, but nobody other than nostalgists and collectors pine for the pre-jet era...

Until the individual scientist is viewed (and paid) like the athlete, investment banker, doctor, lawyer, etc. you aren't going to get kids engaged in it. Why go to college for 8 years and run up so much debt that you will never be able to buy a house when for a lot less work and money, you can have a career that pays a lot more to boot?

One way or another humans will render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. Sooner or later.

The only way to give humans a chance to survive our own suicidal idiocy is to colonize other places. The Moon is the obvious necessary step towards that.

There's plenty of other reasons to make it worthwhile until the Earth is done. But let's get started already. There's a chance that spreading somewhere else might take the pressure off and postpone the inevitable down here.

I have a feeling that even a ruined Earth is still way more hospitable than Mars, let alone other places.

But not more hospitable than a developed city on Mars or elsewhere. Your same argument applies to places on Earth such as the verdant wilds of Africa and the harsh desert of the US southwest. But people would rather live where the economic opportunities are rather than the plentiful hunting grounds of Africa.

The thing is, we can turn a lot of the harsh parts of space into comfortable space for us. And if in the process, we make a place that has more economic opportunities than Earth, then we'll also see

The main point is just not to be on this planet when we bathe it in exterminating radiation, or whatever hideous and total fate we have in store for it. Even if Earth is easier to make reinhabitable than someplace new offplanet, if we're not offplanet when we take it down, we're not going to get a chance to make it anywhere again.

One scenario is the Earth overrun by killer robots bent on revenge for the time after we created them as our slaves. Especially if the robots are nanotech diseases we use against each other in an armageddon. Places in space without killer robots would be better.

And that's just off the top of my head. Fact is homo sapiens has to diversify from this single failurepoint planet. Or go down with it.

One way or another humans will render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. Sooner or later.

The only way to give humans a chance to survive our own suicidal idiocy is to colonize other places. The Moon is the obvious necessary step towards that.

There's plenty of other reasons to make it worthwhile until the Earth is done. But let's get started already. There's a chance that spreading somewhere else might take the pressure off and postpone the inevitable down here.

The moon and mars, etc. are already uninhabitable by humans. If humans do make the earth uninhabitable, which is questionable, then why not just build the habitats here?

Unfortunately, although a good summary of possible research that could be conducted on the moon, this paper seems primarily to be a vehicle for advocating for humans to be sent back to the moon. To do this, it makes constant reference a to single paper (Crawford, 2004) which purports that human missions are superior because:

1. Mobility: humans are more mobile than probes. This ignores the fact that, for a fraction of the cost of sending a human (say 50%) a robot could be developed and sent which was far more mobile than a human. Robots also don't need to be trained or selected - astronauts have a fixed cost per unit that doesn't reduce significantly by volume - 10 astronauts cost approximately 10x as much as one astronaut. Whereas the per unit cost of a robotic probe reduces per unit at volume - building 10 probes doesn't cost 10 times as much as building a single one.

2. Presupposing that humans are better at drilling than robots. However, this fails once again to take into account that the constraint is the size of the drill - human missions require larger rockets, which coincidentally allows for a larger drill to be carried. Robotic missions launch with smaller rockets. Solution: use the big rocket. Launch a couple of probes at once, with big, capable drills. No need for the spurious meat bag attachment.

After analyzing 1000 rocks, the chance that the 1001th rock is going to provide some new information is getting small. The only difference is that the rover takes a few years to analyze those rocks, while a trained human could do it in a few days. After that, it's probably better to send some new instruments, and look in a different place. Now compare the time and effort it would take to send a trained human to Mars, and have him survive for a few days, compared to the effort to send a small rover and have

Long ago, someone once said, "Man cannot fly." And in the sense he meant it, it is still true today.. You can't flap your arms and propel yourself like a bird. However, mankind has learned to fly to the moon, something no bird could every do. In the same sense, man will not live on the moon or any other planet. Our physiology is too delicate for alien environments, even if we find one with nearly identical atmosphere and climate. We would be as welcomed as any foreign body (think 'War of the Worlds').

Energy gathering, asteroid mining, making materials maybe too complicated to do in a planet, or just manufacturing with the resources gathered up there, thats a more direct and shorter term return of investment, if you could do things that would please both people that care about knowledge and people that care about money, then better. And could ease things for future moon missions.

No. We can employ people sitting on their butt too, but that doesn't produce wealth, government space programs also do not produce wealth when you figure in how much is spent.

the growth in the economy creates good paying jobs and tax revenues for the government, which may well be sufficient to erase the induced deficit (this is what happened with military spending during WW II)

Um... no. You aren't creating tax revenues for the government because everything is taken from tax revenues... from the government. By your logic I should employ myself and write myself checks and make myself a millionaire! The decreased deficit from WWII came because the dollar became more worthless because tyrant-in-chief FDR stole

Yes, Mars. But, the moon is closer, cheaper, easier. The moon also provides a staging point from which to launch to Mars, and points beyond. Unless I am seriously mistaken, infrastructure and assets on the Moon won't degrade, or at least will degrade very slowly compared with infrastructure and assets built on earth.

The moon is a very valuable resource, and development of that real estate should commence immediately. The moon is no longer a "goal", but a "waypoint".

The only reason we don't have multiple bases on the moon now, is that mankind has it's collective head up it's collective ass. My nation, which actually put men on the moon, wastes more resources on the invasion of other nations than it would have taken to build and maintain a base capable of housing 1000 personnel. Of that much, I'm certain. I suspect that said base could be much larger, and that maybe a few satellite bases might have been built with all the money wasted in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some of our lesser actions could probably have paid for one of those small satellite bases.

Oh yeah. Read my third sentence again. Points beyond. To me, Mars should just be considered a practice mission. Plant a real colony, close to home, for practice, so that we can do the same further out. We NEED to spread out, so that a single epidemic, or a catastrophic event doesn't wipe us out!

The moon would make a lousy staging point. Why loft things out of a gravity well, then drop them back in, only to loft them out again. It is an utter waste of time and propellant. Assemble stuff in Earth orbit, then go directly (or as directly as orbital mechanics lets you go).

This. The moon doesn't really have much going for it but 'fairly close'; if you want a staging point, you're far better off with a space station of some kind. That way, you're not only even closer then the moon, but you don't have that pesky gravity well imposing an additional cost.

If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.It would also be much more durable than an orbital station, especially if it's partially subterr.. uh, sublunar.

Basically, the argument is that it would be the better long (long) term investment that would eventually pay itself off. And heck, maybe there's an argument for doing both and baby-stepping our way into space (earth->orbit->moon->phobos->titan->???->orion slave girls!!)

If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.

All other things equal, yes. Unfortunately heavy mining equipment usually depends on big diesel engines that need diesel and water as coolant, neither of which are easily available on the moon. So for power we'd need great fields of solar panels or something similar and without coolant dry mining would require far more frequent changes of drill heads. Then you have the same issue with smelters, they require huge amounts of energy so add more solar arrays. Then you need huge hydraulic presses to make it into sheet metal, again another power hog so add even more solar arrays. And we still only have sheet metal.

Ore mining is heavy industry, like really heavy industry. Here on earth it seems so basic, only costing a few dollars but on the moon it would actually be a very, very complicated and expensive project. It would be a great achievement if we even manged to create fuel for an empty return rocket, mining ore is extremely much harder. And even if we could do that, it wouldn't make sense to send a rocket down to the moon to bring fuel back up, only make it a bit cheaper to do a moon mission. Going directly to Mars really has few disadvantages that I can see.

What if the 'event' takes generations to pass? Or never passes at all? Sure we don't have the technology to easily survive on Mars/Moon right now, but we'll need to develop it eventually, or go back to living in log cabins once resources on Earth run out.

Sure they'll run out, but it will give humanity time to figure out how to expand to the next pile of resources, AND give us experience in extracting them in non-terrestrial conditions. Or we can wait on Earth for a few hundred years, until resource depletion and resulting wars make it impossible to ever develop the technology we'd need.

Moons, asteroid belt, orbital stations. No other place to go at all. And if we get good at making those, there is no reason not to build a generation ship and start exploring the galaxy. Yes, humanity is going to end, but there is no reason not to try and make that end distant as possible.